pbjelly

Posted 06 September 2011 - 06:58 AM

pbjelly

Nano Reefer

Members

332 posts

Joined 25 Aug 2011

Brooklyn, NY

This is the beginning of what I hope will be an enjoyable trip into the world of keeping and tending a nano reef tank.

I've bought a 14 gallon biocube and stand, I've been reading all the threads I can and making a list of the basic mods I think I should start out with, and with a little luck and a lot of patience, I'm hoping to have a small piece of the ocean to come home to.

It was either a tank or a beach house and the $500,000 for the house kind of made the decision for me...

What I Did for my Labor Day Vacation, or Lessons in Patience.

I've discovered that my brand new BioCube has a dud socket in the hood. I've swapped the ballasts and I've swapped the bulbs. The fans go on, but one socket stays stubbornly dark.

After leaving some voice-mails over at Central, the parent company of Oceanic Systems, I've discovered what every BioCube owner should (and probably already does) know - the man to talk to is Rob Moneyhan <rmoneyhan(at)central-aquatics.com>. He's shipped me a replacement socket, and with a little fiddling, I should be good to go.

pbjelly

Posted 08 September 2011 - 05:32 AM

Mine did the same thing. Had to unplug and replug the light a couple of times and it started working. Although it's good to know the guys name if mine goes bad.

Hey Keith, I took a look at your build and I think I may be calling Rob Moneyhan a lot more than you.You've got a really impressive DIY thing going that I can only aspire to. I'm good at following directions, but I don't see anything involving a drill press in my immediate future. - My downstairs neighbor would flip out.

I received the new socket in record time, and (following the nicely included directions), did the socket swap easily. Has anyone else noticed that the Oceanic directions always seem to either be missing one step or have something mirrored or reversed? The tank stand directions are fully illustrated with great drawings that unfortunately don't become a tank stand if you follow them. If you are building the BioCube 14g stand, reverse the hinge installation from what they show otherwise you end up with a bizarre gap on one side. How do I know? The hard way of course...

On a side note, I'm a little freaked about the fact that I've already disassembled, dremelled, and broken off parts of my brand-new tank and hood, but I guess it's always better to know how things work than to be surprised later if/when they break.

That false floor in chamber one was REALLY hard to get out. I finally gave up on trying to pry it up and just smashed it in two.

pbjelly

Posted 25 September 2011 - 06:58 AM

I'm cycling, so there's not a whole lot going on other than me having fun with colored chemicals.Somehow I managed to do this while REMOVING the stopper of my Ph test. *sigh*

I was getting some rather nice little spots growing on the giga rock when I decided that I'd never have the opportunity again once I got coral or fish in there, so I took it out, hacked a channel in the bottom of it to make a waterway from front to back, rinsed it to get the rock debris off, and put it back in. This, of course killed all of my nice little brown spots.

Mine turns my lights on at the correct time, but won't turn them off. I can't figure out WTH is going on. I've checked the AM/PM possibility, the set for different days possibility, I'm sure it's some other stupid thing.

Off to play with more chemicals. Hopefully I won't break anything today.

pbjelly

Posted 27 September 2011 - 05:00 PM

So my snail Sting (because he's a canary in a coal mine) managed to knock over the piece of live rock (coral skeleton) that I've been using to seed my tank, and it SCRATCHED THE GLASS!

No one will ever notice but me, it's a tiny scratch, but I'm still recovering from bashing out the false platforms and cutting out the dividers in this brand new tank so my first scratch is making me pretty unhappy. Biocubes are glass, right? That coral is really freaking sharp.

My spaghetti worm (thank you for the id mmcguffi) sh*ts huge clouds of cr*p at random times. Big, stringy, cloudy, cr*ps. Given that I don't spend the entire day sitting in front of my cycling tank, it's got to be spewing loads at least a few times an hour, because I've seen it do it at least five times today and the cloud is big enough that it takes a few minutes to disperse.

And on a scary note, when the coral skeleton fell over, I sank it into the sand reversed from where it originally had been, so now I'm looking at the back side and I think I see a tiny Aiptasia. It's so small I don't think I can get a picture of it with my crappy little PAS, but it's fanning out from a tiny hole in the coral and has banded stripes...

pbjelly

Posted 02 October 2011 - 10:58 AM

pbjelly

Nano Reefer

Members

332 posts

Joined 25 Aug 2011

Brooklyn, NY

I've been trying to figure out where the best position for my powerhead is to create the best flow in the tank. I had it on the right, facing forward blowing at the front glass. This makes a nice circular current, but it's pretty strong down at sand lavel where I'm hoping to put some mushrooms and ricordea.
Too strong? I don't know.
As an experiment, I swapped the powerhead to the other side below the return and facing parallel to the back wall. I'm not sure if it's better - it's definitely calmer on the front side of the tank while still retaining circulation, but there was one side effect...

For those of you who started with cured live rock, this is no big deal. But for me, every new minute living creature is practically a miracle as it seems they have appeared out of thin air. (Not true, I know, but it feels this way)

Anyway, when I switched the powerhead, all of a sudden I could see dozens of larger pods racing across the sand and the rocks. There's a whole little pod army running around down there.

pbjelly

Posted 07 October 2011 - 10:04 AM

pbjelly

Nano Reefer

Members

332 posts

Joined 25 Aug 2011

Brooklyn, NY

It's been a month since I started this tank, and everything is stabilizing, so I thought I'd get started with a CUC.

I got my rock from John at ReefCleaners - and I'm happy with it, so I placed an order for some macros. I would have gotten the rest of my stuff from him, but I was reading about Strombus snails and decided I wanted to give them a try.

I placed an order with Indo-Pacific Sea Farms for some snails, some mini-stars, sand bed clams, micro-hermits and various other stuff. I wanted to avoid the CUC overpopulation I see happening with a lot of tanks, so I tried to be mindful when placing my order. Of course, that didn't quite work out...

I think it was me not reading their website correctly, not them sending me a million things I didn't order, but I ended up with twice as many snails and twice as many micro-hermits as I wanted, so I'm hoping my LFS takes donations unless someone in the NYC area wants to come by for a couple of hermits. My tank feels like an ant farm.

I'm going to leave it for a while to settle and see if everything evens out.The hermits are a riot to watch. They try on new shells like a bunch of girls at the mall. Most of them are pretty tiny, which is nice in a small tank like this but the guy in the picture is pretty macro instead of micro.

msscha

Posted 08 October 2011 - 10:14 AM

I've discovered that my brand new BioCube has a dud socket in the hood. I've swapped the ballasts and I've swapped the bulbs. The fans go on, but one socket stays stubbornly dark.

After leaving some voice-mails over at Central, the parent company of Oceanic Systems, I've discovered what every BioCube owner should (and probably already does) know - the man to talk to is Rob Moneyhan <rmoneyhan(at)central-aquatics.com>. He's shipped me a replacement socket, and with a little fiddling, I should be good to go.

Mine arrived with a broken ballast and fan. I purchased it through Amazon, so it went back to the seller despite the message on the box. I ended up getting one locally for $199 ($30 more than the online price) just so that if it was broken, I could return it to a human being with a rep to protect. The second purchase was fine, although sometimes the fans want to harp a bit loudly before getting going. Otherwise, the heat from the bulbs (even with the fan) has been sufficient to keep the water the right temperature. May still have to add a heater this winter, though. Otherwise, I didn't mod anything. I didn't even consider it! I wasn't willing to cut anything for fear of messing up.

pbjelly

Posted 09 October 2011 - 08:25 AM

After having to go 'under the hood' in mine, I feel like the wiring in these is a little chintzy. And I'm not a fan of how the ballasts just hang down the back if you've got a stand.

Otherwise, the heat from the bulbs (even with the fan) has been sufficient to keep the water the right temperature. May still have to add a heater this winter, though. Otherwise, I didn't mod anything. I didn't even consider it! I wasn't willing to cut anything for fear of messing up.

I'm jealous.

I've got a 75watt heater in mine AND I'm going to have to install a chiller before next summer rolls around because my apartment gets so hot and then so cold. Balancing the temperature is turning out to be the hardest thing I'm dealing with right now.I'm even thinking about a controller, not so much for the automation, but because it would give me a more complete picture of how much my temperatures are fluctuating from day to night.

Seems a bit like putting chrome bumpers on a big wheel though to put an aquacontroller on a 14 gallon nano.

pbjelly

Posted 17 October 2011 - 04:31 PM

This has got to have been the longest five and a half weeks ever, but my wait is over.

My first coral - an orange ricordia florida 5 minutes after I got it settled in the tank.

This one is on a frag plug that I guess I have to find something to chop the end off with. I ordered a few more from Coral Morphologic that should arrive by next week and apparently those don't come on plugs.

Does anyone have experience with trying to get ricordeas to attach to rock? In a perfect world, I'd love to have them all on the flat rock in the front.

iDream

Posted 17 October 2011 - 04:47 PM

This has got to have been the longest five and a half weeks ever, but my wait is over.

My first coral - an orange ricordia florida 5 minutes after I got it settled in the tank.

This one is on a frag plug that I guess I have to find something to chop the end off with. I ordered a few more from Coral Morphologic that should arrive by next week and apparently those don't come on plugs.

Does anyone have experience with trying to get ricordeas to attach to rock? In a perfect world, I'd love to have them all on the flat rock in the front.

I've ordered from them before, they usually have a couple small rock fragments they're attached to, If possible take the rock out and glue the rics down, I waited a few days for my rics to naturally attach, but I was too impatient and ended up supergluing them to some rocks/frag plugs

metrokat

Posted 17 October 2011 - 04:47 PM

metrokat

High Heeled Reefer ;)

Premium Members

30,967 posts

Joined 14 Jul 2011

New York

The tank stand directions are fully illustrated with great drawings that unfortunately don't become a tank stand if you follow them. If you are building the BioCube 14g stand, reverse the hinge installation from what they show otherwise you end up with a bizarre gap on one side. How do I know? The hard way of course...

Damn! That happened to me. How do I fix it? I tried to reverse it and all but it just would not align properly.